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“I must go,” he said, his voice taut and angry. “You remain here until you are ... feeling more yourself.”
Frances couldn’t have moved in any case. She watched him pause a moment at the door, shake his head, and quickly leave the room.
She sank slowly to the floor, her eyes closed. What happened to me? she wondered. Why did I react like that? For an instant she felt his fingers probing against her and shuddered. She had wanted him to continue, wanted him to make that odd, so strange pressure build within her. Tentatively, she slid her hand down her belly to lightly touch herself. She felt dampness and pounding heat and jerked her hand away. She moaned softly, not understanding. She felt weak and tight as a bow string, all at the same time.
“What is wrong with me?” she asked the empty room.
She rolled into a small ball, holding her knees, waiting for her breathing to slow. She didn’t move for many minutes.
Frances faced her husband at the dinner table. It had required all her resolution not to plead an awful illness, anything not to have to face him. He had had the absolute nerve to send her a message saying he would join her in her room for dinner if she didn’t come down.
She had come down. She fully expected nastiness from him, brazen innuendos, baiting. But as yet he had said nothing.
“Would you like some crimped salmon, Frances?” he asked, his voice as smooth as honey.
She shook her head. She didn’t want anything, be it crimped, broiled, baked, or raw.
“Some boiled capon?”
“Yes,” she said finally, knowing something had to join the vegetables on her plate, A footman rushed to serve her. Of course, she thought. He couldn’t bait her until they were alone.
But he didn’t dismiss the servants. Otis hovered.
Hawk spoke of his long association with the Melchers, a most unexceptionable topic to the point of boredom.
When he took a final bit of plum pudding, he shoved his chair back and regarded her. “I don’t believe I will drink any port. Shall we go to the drawing room, Frances?”
There was no hope for it. At least he hadn’t demanded she go with him to his bedchamber.
Otis helped her with her chair. She gave him a shy thank-you and walked beside her husband to the drawing room.
Frances seated herself close to the fireplace. It had grown cool and there was a small fire burning. She clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the orange flames.
“How do you feel?” he asked abruptly.
She quivered at those particular words. Get a hold of yourself, ninny! She managed to say with credible calm, “I am quite all right, my lord. Quite myself again.”
“A pity,” Hawk said, his voice still smooth.
Her eyes met his, and she saw irony in his, and something else she didn’t understand.
“Would you play for me, Frances?”
He was offering her escape! She nearly leapt to her feet. “Yes, certainly,” she said, her voice so pitfully uncertain that Hawk was hard pressed not to smile.
She launched immediately into a very difficult Haydn sonata, only to discover that her fingers had no intention of obeying her. She slaughtered several measures, then with a grimace lifted her hands from the keys.
Hawk said gently, “I should prefer something more gentle, perhaps. Another Scottish ballad?”
He was standing behind her; she felt his warm breath against the top of her head.
“I don’t know if I can,” she blurted out, so mortified that she wanted to scream and cry at the same time.
Hawk smiled down at her, a painful smile. He looked at her white shoulders and wanted more than anything to touch her, caress her, ease his hands over her shoulders and downward to her full breasts.
He’d been so close this afternoon, so very close. He closed his eyes a moment, his fingers curling at the memory of her exquisite response to him. It had been in those few moments that he had realized that Amalie was quite right. A wife could be seduced, a wife could experience as much pleasure as a man’s mistress. He realized suddenly that he’d been silent too long, and quickly said, “Why don’t we play piquet instead? Should you like that?”
Piquet! She was an excellent player, for her father had drummed rules and strategy into her head at the age of ten. She wondered briefly if she would be able to tell the difference between a king and a jack.
